Today we’ll be talking with Tom Wickline, leader of the Bordeaux Technology Group, a company specialized in development of Windows compatibility software, supporting Linux, FreeBSD, PC-BSD, Solaris, OpenIndiana and Mac OS X.

TuxArena: Hello there Tom, thank you for being with us today.

You’re welcome – I always like talking about Wine and projects involved with Wine.

TuxArena: What is your position at Bordeaux? What other projects are you involved with?

My position at Bordeaux is release manager and public relations. I also help code the script parts of Bordeaux, a couple examples would be our custom winetricks script and our build script. As for other projects, I have a Wine centric news site that I run : Wine Reviews. I’m also an admin at Linux Gamers.

TuxArena: Please tell us, what is Bordeaux? How is it different from Wine, and what does it have in common with Wine?

Bordeaux is a *simple* GTK front-end to assist in installing a limited set of applications. Bordeaux also comes with a Cellar Manager, e.g. Bottle Manager. A Cellar or Bottle is just a nice name for a wineprefix by the way, Bordeaux bundles a custom version of Wine, the build includes some hacks that may help a limited number of applications run a little better then they normally would. As an example we build the unsupported DIB engine and Pulse Audio support in our release.

TuxArena: When and why did you start putting up Bordeaux?

Bordeaux was started and written by Steven Edwards as a front-end to winetricks in late 2007, at that time winetricks didn’t have a GUI. With each release new features have been added like application installs and the Cellar Manager.

TuxArena: What are the Bordeaux goals? What is the difference between Bordeaux software and CrossOver from CodeWeavers?

Our goals are to release for every architecture that Wine runs on. FreeBSD, PC-BSD, at the time OpenSolaris now OpenIndiana as well as Linux and Mac and maybe one day Bordeaux for ARM. Simple answer, Allot :) CodeWeavers ships a more advanced build of Wine then what we do, they have some hacks, tweaks that are built into their releases that we can’t build into ours. Their current front-end is allot more advanced then our current front-end.

But with that said, we also have some strong points I believe. We have builds for FreeBSD, PCBSD and OpenIndiana all extremely small markets. We now sell a custom version of Wineskin: Wineskin Pro that is written in ObjC/Cocoa and C++ and it comes with a custom XQuartz X11 windowing system that is needed for fullscreen gaming on Mac. In the future Bordeaux for Mac will be fazed out, and Wineskin Pro will take its place. GTK on Mac is not what allot of people want, a native application is always more pleasing.

TuxArena: What kind of users are you aiming towards?

People who can benefit from our custom Wine build, I personally like users who like to tinker, our Bordeaux winetricks script is readable and editable by the way. So if a download location for a component breaks they can fix it on their own. Wineskin Pro is geared more towards people who want to play Windows Games on their Mac. You can also run applications with Wineskin Pro, anything that Wine runs Wineskin Pro can run too. Wineskin Pro also has a Wine build manager, for people who want to build their own Wine builds. Everything is in an easy to use GUI, and it makes building Wine on a Mac about as simple as it can be.

TuxArena: How many products do you have? What do each specializes in and what differentiates them?

We currently have Bordeaux that runs on each architecture listed above, and Wineskin Pro that only runs on Mac. Bordeaux is built the the same on each architecture so their are no differences between architectures.

TuxArena: What is the cost of Bordeaux software? Does it offer a one-time payment for all the versions of Bordeaux or only for a certain version?

Bordeaux currently costs only $20.00 for Linux and Free/PC-BSD, Bordeaux for Mac / OpenIndiania costs $25.00 and Wineskin Pro costs $29.95 per license. A license is sold per architecture, customers get free upgrades for six months.

TuxArena: Is Bordeaux open-source? What are the licensing terms that it uses?

Sorry but no, Bordeaux is closed source software governed by a proprietary license that prohibits sharing. However many of the components that we use are open-source, Wine, winetricks and public hacks.

TuxArena: Do you provide support and online documentation?

Yes, we have a basic support ticket system in place at this time and online documentation is provided on the Bordeaux site. The documentation was written by me and it covers the install, dependencies and usage. It also covers how to run Bordeaux from the command line.

TuxArena: Thank you for taking the time to talk with us about Bordeaux, Tom. We wish you continuing good luck in improving and developing it.

Thank You!